97. Things freely Given
1 Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
It is promised to us that we will know the things freely given to us. Many wonderful and great things are given to all people, but not all people know what they are or where they come from. Wonderful blessings are given to believers, like Salvation and all that goes with it, but many believers don’t know all the things that are given. The promise of God is that we can know the things God gave us. The Word of God reveals these freely given things to us. The Holy Spirit reveals them to us through the Word.
We know what we are getting: we are receiving many great and precious promises from God. Some He has already granted, some He is presently granting, and others are still coming while we wait on tiptoe for the final fulfillment. We know what we are getting: the future is not uncertain, the present is not dark, and the past is cleansed and made right with God. We know what we are getting: anyone can look into the promises of God in His Word and ask the Spirit of God to reveal them to us and to grant the faith to receive them. We can live on these things freely given, and even more significantly, we can die on them. We know what we are getting: we have received the Spirit of God, and He: 1) reveals them to us, 2) grants the faith to receive them, 3) prompts us to pray for them, 4) and even intercedes for us.
How do we know? How can we be sure? We know by the Spirit who uses the Word of God to make us know and believe. We know because He convinces us that the invisible things of God are real, and we know they are even more real than then the things that the spirit of the world promises us. The spirit of the world does promise us things also, but those things are temporal, ephemeral, transient, end up as dust, are not satisfying, and will always disappoint. The world promises things we can see and all of those things have the sentence of death upon them.Worldly things all have a way of disappearing, vanishing, drying up, dying, and deteriorating. The things that are not seen are eternal for they are the things of God. By faith we look at the things that are not seen and we believe them, we receive them, we have them, and nothing can separate us from them, for the unseen things of God freely given are more real, substantial, and alive. We live by faith, not by sight. That is real.